Adarsh Shetty is a happy man. The president of the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association (or AHAR, as they call themselves) has been answering phone calls and giving sound bytes to media houses all of Thursday as soon as the Supreme Court stayed the 2014 amendment in the Maharashtra Police Act that banned dance performances at hotels and bars.
“Did you know that the ban is not restricted to dance bars alone,” he asks. “It is against any performance. If they wish, they can stop your birthday celebration, too. The amendment gives them the sanction. This is against freedom of expression and when we appealed in the court, we communicated this.”
The government should come and talk to the association, Mr. Shetty says. “We are open to discussion. It is an interim order on the blanket ban on performances in the whole of Maharashtra. The government should tell us what it wants so that it will be easy to implement. It will be win-win for both.”
Mr. Shetty says his association feels that dance bars, if legally maintained and with appropriate licence, could be a big boost to tourism. “We say Mumbai is an international city, but all that a tourist can do to experience night life here is go out for dinner. Where’s the night life?”
“We need to provide international-quality facilities. This is a good way to promote tourism. I have seen foreign tourists being charmed by a dance bar. They have no negative connotation. We need to break away from the shackles of looking at these places as just dance bars.”
He says AHAR and its members will follow protocols and government-defined parameters to run these establishments. “It is our duty,” he says. “The order says dance performances are allowed but it cannot be obscene, and this is ambiguous. How can a girl dancing at a bar be obscene when you have issued them a Licence?”
He alleges that the police officers treated anything they saw in a bar as obscene, but when the matter was taken to court, it had little or no legal standing. “The officers just wanted to be ‘taken care of’,” he says.
